


indifference is the least we have to dread from man or beast

by dorothy_notgale



Series: The More Loving One (Beyond Beyond Re-Animator) [3]
Category: Beyond Re-Animator (2003), Re-Animator (1985)
Genre: Cats, Coercive Behavior, Discussion Of Murder, Discussion of past rape/non-con, Lots of Sex, M/M, Reunion, Romance, Stalking behavior, safe sex, see notes for additional information
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 14:46:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5052781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Each caress is a step back in time to a self long since buried—apparently in a grave too shallow to deter Herbert's corpse-seeking ways.</em>
</p><p>Herbert West has escaped from prison, and shown up in Dan's living room. Dan realizes that there was more there in the past than he ever wanted to examine, and has to decide once more whether to let go or hold on to the thing that ruined his life.</p><p>The man that changed his life.</p><p>Continues immediately from where "Deja Vu" left off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	indifference is the least we have to dread from man or beast

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from [W.H. Auden's "The More Loving One"](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/more-loving-one)
> 
> When I was 90% finished writing this, I discovered the perfect song for it: [Suzanne Vega's "Bound"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rod7yk002Sc)

It's after nine when Dan gets home, sun already sunk below the horizon. Paperwork waits for no one, but really, he knows he's been avoiding the hollow emptiness of his house. Allie's friends (shifty-eyed and moving in pairs) picked up the last of her things over the weekend; he's well and truly alone for now. On the bright side, that means no one moves his furniture, so he doesn't bother turning the lights on as he enters.

He realizes what a mistake that is when something warm and lithe slams against his ankles. His unregistered .38 swings free with the ease of long if antiquated practice, because some habits die hard. He gets off one blind shot in the dark before the combination of the thing at his feet and a sharp shove to the small of his back send him tumbling down. Impact with the hardwood floor leaves his knees aching; Allie'd been right about needing an entry rug.

“Drop the gun,” says the voice of the past as a clawlike hand grips the back of his neck. _West_. Of course he hadn't had the decency to die in that riot, and _of course_ he'd show up despite time and distance and name changes— _“Drop_ it, Daniel.” The hand gives a firm but gentle shake, like one would to an errant puppy.

He lets the pistol clatter to the floor; maybe giving up will make this easier. A velvety nose pokes at his face, whiskers prickly and breath reeking of tuna. Socks's black mask frames weirdly glowing eyes. _Of._ _C_ _ourse_.

“That's a very affectionate animal, Dan—though I can't say much for its intelligence,” West's silhouette says mildly. Dan hears him release the cylinder to pocket the brass and remaining five rounds. “Really, you'd think it would have learned better after what you did to it.”

“Like you did?” he wheezes.

“Oh, yes, I learned. Three years in solitary confinement is the best teacher a man can have.”

“Three years? That's inhumane.” _Old habits_.

West laughs, then, mad and shrill as Dan heard only a few times in their years together. The first had been after Rufus, and the last when Dan walked out of the courtroom in a sober suit while West was carried away in orange.

“As though you ever believed I'm human,” he manages finally, through the last few huffing giggles. “Anyway, I suppose I didn't give them much choice; the Warden was a bit upset by my shivving another inmate in the showers. I do apologize for the hindquarters, though.”

“What?” This habit of throwing out casual non sequiturs was always one of the more annoying aspects of West's personality, besides the violent insanity; Dan had never been sure whether it was a deliberate ploy to keep people off balance, or simply a self-absorption so deep that any conversational deviations were ignored in favor of his own script.

“That they don't match.” West flips the lights on easily, no groping for the switch _(_ _B_ _ad sign; how long had he been here? How many times?),_ before pointing to his recent resurrection. “The rear legs and pelvis were simply too damaged from your beating it to death for reconstruction to be practical when I already had the materials to replace them.”

The cat rolls onto his back, two black paws and two orange ones waving in the air. A stretch of stitches across the belly forms the line of demarcation between Socks's Siamese front and a fluffy marmalade backside.

He begins purring almost instantly when Dan strokes the soft, warm fur in horrified wonder.

“Jesus Christ, West—”

“Get up!” the intruder snaps, withdrawing to stand by the living room sofa. “There's no sense in having this conversation with you on bended knee.”

A 'conversation.' Sweet Lord. _Obey the_ _escaped_ _felon_ _with the gun._ He levers himself up and is in the process of brushing dust from his knees when a rap sounds at the front door.

They stare at one another, and wordlessly unite in that same old game: Hide the Problem. Herbert skitters behind the couch while Dan peeks out, 'friendly neighbor' face plastered on and probably stretched thin around the eyes and mouth.

“Dr. Abel!” The bubbly, aged voice of the neighborhood busybody floats up from chest height.

“Oh, Mrs. Fink.” He opens the door only wide enough to stick his head and one shoulder out, foot braced in the crack so that the entire space is blocked by his body. “What can I do for you tonight? Is your ankle bothering you again?”

“Call me Amanda, dear. I've told you that. Bunny and I were just passing by,” (the leashless, cotton-ball canine whuffles) “and I could have sworn we heard a gunshot.”

Save him from suburban sleuths. Or rather, save _them_. As they speak, West raises Dan's .38 to hip height. Dan gesticulates with his hidden hand, attempting to communicate how very much he doesn't want the poor woman to die; to his surprise, West silently slides the front window open and tosses the weapon into the bushes. The screen has been cut, which explains how he got inside in the first place.

“Oh, no, ma'am. Nothing exciting going on here.”

Just then, Bunny barks, prompting a yowl from the cat- _thing_. Noses meet around Dan's leg.

“Why, who on earth is this?” the old woman coos. “And where did you find a little one with such unusual markings?”

“An old friend just gave him to me. You probably heard his car backfiring when he parked in the garage.”

“How kind of your friend! You'll have to bring him around to meet us sometime. Bunny, no. Stop that. Leave the kitty be.” She sniffs the air herself, and adds, “You should do something about that odd smell, dear. It reeks like gunpowder.”

“Yes, Mrs—Amanda. I'll call the gas company tomorrow.”

 _At last_ she leaves, taking her beast with her. He fairly slams the deadbolt home. West comes back around the couch with the wounded dignity of an actor whose big scene was interrupted by a 'headlights on' announcement.

“Was that performance for her benefit, or mine?”

“Does it matter? She's just an old lady, and she's been a little jumpy since a neighbor's house blew up a while back. It's sweet.”

Inanities. The brief interruption wrecked their momentum. As they each try to regain their venom, Dan has the chance to actually study Herbert in the warm, fractured light of the crystalline overhead fixture. Its glow reveals a view strangely out of synch with memories alternately buried and resurrected over the years: somehow Dan hadn't expected him to age. Despite knowing that his partner of old was alive to grow, Dan had never stopped picturing him as the thin, pinched, waxen youth he'd met in a morgue. These new lines in his face, new fullness to his cheeks, new glasses in an unfamiliar style—all speak to a life _lived_ , not observed. It's a human frailty he's never really thought of in connection with his personal devil.

Herbert recovers his aplomb first, rolling his shoulders back arrogantly.

“I'm hurt, Dan,” he says in singsong; sarcastic petulance has always been an art form coming from him. “You didn't call; you didn't write; how was I to believe you'd remain faithful to your man in the Big House?”

“I agreed to that, West.” His lawyers had been very insistent on it, in point of fact. At the time it had seemed absurdly unnecessary; why would either of them _want_ to make contact, after what had happened? “I agreed that we should never—that I wouldn't—you're not supposed to _be_ here!”

“And yet here I am.” Splattered with cat blood, in the living room, free and easy as if he hasn't a care in the world. Life is truly unfair.

And possibly at an end.

“Did you come to kill me?”

“Of course not.” Eyes roll in a vaudevillian flourish. “You've already betrayed me; murder would accomplish nothing.”

Which makes sense, of a sort. West had always preferred to kill for prevention, rather than solely revenge. _(_ _Dan_ _hates that he can still decipher_ _the_ _logic, and he hates that he's wondering why West wouldn't just slice him up him for parts regardless.)_ “So why are you here?”

“Because I wanted to see you,” he says, as though that means anything at all. “Having done so, I will now leave. You will live your little, safe, lonely life, grow old, and die in your office one evening at the age of sixty-two due to untreated cardiac troubles, all while knowing that I'm out... there. Somewhere.” The words are handed down with all the import of a prophecy and all the seriousness of a prison sentence, and Dan can fairly feel reality itself realigning to fit his conviction.

“And that's it?”

“That's it.”

“Dammit, Herbert—you can't come back just to leave again!” _(_ _Not that it had been Herbert who left_ _the first time_ _.)_

“Whyever not?” He is as smug and all-around obnoxious as _young_ Mr. West, _student_ , had been when parading his brilliance before the kind of uncomprehending fools to whose number Dan has never before been relegated.

“Because that's not how it _works!”_ Dan seizes Herbert's narrow shoulders in both hands and drags him up; muscles flinch beneath his grip in a blatant fight-or-flight response, and he relishes Herbert's sharp inhale and widening eyes. _F_ _inally_ to be taken seriously, murderous hands braced defensively against his pectorals; Dan fully expects a scalpel _(shiv?)_ to the jugular when he smashes their mouths together.

Instead, Herbert... he doesn't melt. He remains coiled, tense, even as his hands slide up Dan's chest and throat to tangle in his hair. Those pouted lips part in an almost-snarl to return the kiss. He tastes of nothing in particular, but smells different than Dan remembers, lilylike. Closer to a funeral, maybe. Cheap, floral motel soap, more likely; in the past, he'd always just stolen jugs from the hospital supply closets or helped himself to Dan's Irish Spring.

When he dares to break the kiss, Herbert keeps staring up, mouth open and glistening. His utter stillness is unnerving—he could seem either predator or prey if Dan didn't recognize it as a cat's deadly calm, one which forces others to move into range. Herbert stood this way when waiting to strike, once-twice-many upon a time, and in the face of it Dan quakes.

Then Herbert's eyes flutter shut in time with a trembling exhale.

“Come on, Dan,” he murmurs, “We're too old to do this on the couch.”

Hand-in-hand, Dan follows him upstairs. He sees no hesitation, hears no question as to the location of the master bedroom or its light switch; oh, yes, Herbert has been here before.

Behind another closed door, Dan hooks two fingers above a lazy four-in-hand knot. He can feel the working of tendon and cartilage at his knuckles before yanking down to set the black tie flying. Herbert's bloodflecked Oxford is buttoned all the way up; as Dan fiddles with the collar, hands snake under his own sweater to untuck his tank. Each touch is a cold shock that lingers bloodless against his heated skin. He feels marked.

_God alone knows what letter Dan should bear for his sins; he's committed an entire alphabet for, with, and against this man._

Herbert wears no undershirt, and his rolled-up sleeves make stripping him to the waist the work of seconds. His sparsely-furred body has gone soft around the midsection, skin sagging a little over rounder flesh. Before, there'd been hardly enough present to cover his bones.

“Daniel—”

“Shut up, Herbert. For once in your life, please.” He swallows the attempted response in a gentle press of lips and reaches between his old friend's legs to cup what has always been the warmest part of him, straining hard and ready against cheap wool. Some things never change; until this moment, Dan hadn't realized which parts of _himself_ are still the same. Each caress is a step back in time to a self long since buried—apparently in a grave too shallow to deter Herbert's corpse-seeking ways. Something inside him lives again which he would have sworn was dead, not sleeping.

Dan wants to learn this man, this body, all over again; the new creases and scars, the heaviness and middle-aged aches. He wants to know what Herbert thinks of his own grey hairs and the hint of paunch he's been trying to work off at the gym. He wants the time for all that, and time to see more changes. And then he wants Herbert to do what he's meant to do: make time and aging _stop_.

But they have tonight, and afterward Herbert will run, alone, to a place where no one will ever know him again, while Dan will be left to wonder. It's a fair punishment, considering his crimes.

He lowers his mouth to Herbert's neck, feeling the carotid pulse against his tongue in time with that throbbing sex. Both of their problems could end now if he were only animal enough to bite down and loose a forceful gush of blood in the one sort of completion neither of them has ever been cowardly or brave enough to seek.

Instead, he leaves the neck purpled but intact and moves downward, un-gently visiting over a decade's missed chances upon the torso. Running fingertips down the midline of the chest, he imagines the organ that beats beneath. Here, a pink nipple hardens saliva-slick in the cold air; there, a raised fishbelly-white line suggests a story of stitches that he will never learn. He drowns the ascetic in sensuality until Herbert's knees give out and he collapses boneless on the bed. Dan pauses to look down at that heavy-lidded countenance, then peels off his own shirts, kicks his shoes off, and settles on top, legs entwining.

They writhe together, and Dan feels blunt nails score a map into his back, following strange organic patterns of muscle that he'd remember learning if he weren't lost in this moment and all the others like it. His nerves sing—that is, until their belt buckles clash painfully. Herbert growls and digs his claws in at the withdrawal, but is mollified when Dan tugs him to a seated position at the edge of the bed and continues down to his own knees.

Settled in the vee of Herbert's legs, he wonders how he could have convinced himself that he never wanted this. Svengali-esque influence or not, there's no way Herbert could have solely engendered the mouthwatering desire he feels in contemplation of what waits within the sober black trousers.

Bewitching hands play along his face, ears, neck, shoulders, finding hidden erogenous zones and revisiting the sites of long-healed bites while Dan removes the remaining impediments with infinite care.

Herbert has elegant bone structure; flayed and peeled, he'd be an anatomist's dream. Though he's filled out now (healthier by far than the drugged and underfed boy who first took Dan by storm), his delicate skeletal build shows through in fingers, wrists, the hollows of his elbows, the white well-turned ankle to which Dan simply has to drop a quick kiss when bared.

He nibbles his way along the course of the left femoral artery, taking his time and enjoying reflexive twitches as he nears his goal. When they were young, sex was faster and far more perfunctory—stripping in summer heat to quench himself in Herbert's cool body, or bending awkwardly over a lab table as the focus of a strangely procedural act of domination. He hadn't known how his partner would hiss when he fastened teeth over a tendon or lapped into the musky crease between thigh and body.

“Dan.” Had _forgotten_ how that voice sounded gasping his name as he began to tease at the tight testicles, then lick his way up the shaft. “D-da-an.” He moans in sympathy and in anticipation of the flavor of the pearly fluid at the tip.

“Daniel, _stop_.” Herbert yanks Dan's head out of his lap, tearing what feels like half his hair out in the process.

“ _Ow!_ What the hell was that for?”

“We need a condom.” Closed, autocratic body language; the command stings, reminder as it is of the many times Dan's been accused of faithlessness.

“What, you don't trust me?” _The many times he's broken faith._ “I'm a doctor, Herbert, I'm careful with my girlfriends.”

“You are literally contradicting yourself with every word—”

“Just because you've always been a jealous—”

“—I've been in _prison_ , Dan. That's what I've _been_.”

From anyone else, Dan might have at least suspected it was an admission of an affair, especially from an angry partner who, for all his flaws, was at his most attractive the year he went in. From Herbert, though... it's truth, not ego, that makes Dan certain he's the only living person this man has ever voluntarily touched. He buries his face in a pale thigh.

“Is that why you killed him?” His voice is muffled, but he knows he'll be heard.

“Whom?” Deceptively casual drawl.

“The guy in the showers.”

“I've killed a lot of people. Don't romanticize that one.” Fists braced on the navy blue duvet cover, Herbert's posture becomes, if possible, even more erect—an embodied challenge to the entire concept of pity. “Now, do you. Have. Any. Condoms?”

He has to shuffle through the bedside drawer for a bit to find one without Nonoxynol-9, but there are a few cherry flavored ones—Allie's least favorite—in the back. He grabs them all, plus the K-Y he swiped from the office ages ago, and tosses them on the bed before resuming his position with the addition of a pillow for his knees.

It's funny; he's never had to do this with a rubber before. The flavor does precisely nothing, dissipating in an instant and leaving behind flat neutrality. The filmy reservoir tip feels strange on the flat of his tongue, as does the smooth stretch of latex over velvety hardness. His partner doesn't seem to mind, though, sighing and leaning back so that Dan can trail his hands up and swivel those narrow hips open yet wider.

And honestly, the barrier doesn't stop him from savoring the hot meaty fullness in his mouth. It's almost too much to handle, considering how long it's been, but a hand fisted in his hair helps him find the rhythm. In, out, up, down, _breathe, breathe,_ cheeks hollowed, no thoughts but this. His jaw and shoulders manifest the satisfying burn of unaccustomed exercise.

Even without looking, he knows Herbert's posture describes a shocking, utterly wanton backwards arch, chest thrust upward and free hand planted behind him as his toes curl against Dan's sides. He plays his thumbs through the outskirts of wiry pubic hair, focusing on that little touch so that he isn't tempted take a hand away and finish himself off. _Breathe, breathe_.

Orgasm takes Herbert with a cut-off, strangled sound, energy departing his body so explosively that he falls corpselike to the mattress. Dan feels the pulse of ejaculation without the taste or mess, swallows regret instead of any remnant to keep, and automatically waits a moment before releasing the now-quiescent penis so as not to hurt the oversensitized glans. He's not entirely successful, judging by the pained hiss when he slips off the rubber.

He remembers so much more than he'd thought.

Herbert's face has a faraway look, almost of concentration, and he's shaking a little from either cold or reaction. Dan discards his pants and joins him lying sideways across the bed, pulling the covers down to their huddled bodies. Being a human heat source is as good an excuse as any for staying close. After a moment or so, Herbert flicks his head like a wet cat and rolls to face him. His glasses are askew; Dan, greatly daring, slips them off and tosses them towards the head of the bed.

When their unfiltered gazes meet, he's almost disappointed to find no magical explanation written there, nor any Godlike command. Just the tired, weatherbeaten confusion of an intelligent man whose life hasn't gone as predicted. A blink later it's gone—hidden so cleanly by steel that in the past Dan would have believed that what he's just seen was nothing more than a trick of the light.

How much did he miss over the years?

The thought slips away when Herbert shoves him onto his back and straddles his hips, grinding down hard— “ _Jesus Christ!_ ”

“Haven't raised anyone from the dead yet,” Herbert replies with a rueful smirk. Right now, Dan isn't so sure of that.

“But you've come back from it, right?” He can't resist sitting up in pursuit of the living body he's seen in so many little and real deaths.

A shrug, and Herbert slides to one side and slips Dan's briefs down. “How many times did you deny me?”

“I thought I was Judas, not Peter.”

“If you say so; I never was much of a theologian. Here.” Herbert hands over the squashed tube of lubricant and busies himself with slipping a condom onto Dan's persistent erection.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes.”

After an awkward pause on Dan's part, Herbert huffs in irritation, squirts lube onto his own hand, and reaches behind himself.

“Wait.” Herbert immediately stills, and Dan gropes for words that express concern without unwanted pity. “Should we... You've been... through things, and I don't want to cause flashbacks.” Especially considering the life-ending violence that would result; Dan's under no illusions he could defeat an enraged West during sex. “So is there anything I shouldn't do?”

“It was a long time ago, Dan, and it has nothing to do with this. I have perfect confidence that you won't, as you say, 'do' anything.”

“But—”

“Shut up. For once in your life, please.”

Hearing his own words reflected back, Dan understands. Herbert communicates imperfectly in signs and symbols, metaphor and mimicry; he gives others' hearts as bloody tokens without a second thought. Why find new phrases when you're trying to replicate the circumstances of an earlier sequence of events?

Dan closes his eyes and allows himself to be silenced by the kiss.

The act itself begins slow, almost dreamlike; he feels like he's losing time. It's never been this way, so far as he can remember. Within moments he realizes that Herbert's earlier abandon was symptomatic of more than ordinary passion or Dan's skill. On his back beneath him, Herbert is beyond responsive, arching into every touch with a desperation that speaks to intense skin hunger. Dan loathes the feeling that kind of need—born of deprivation and expressed for him and only him—kindles low in his belly.

He's always wanted to be wanted; it's the ultimate turn-on.

Bending to his task, he focuses on Herbert's old mid-coitus expression: closed eyes, furrowed brow, lower lip firmly bitten to muffle any cries. Contained; self-protective. If this is the last time, though, that composure isn't enough to satisfy. _(Their last “last time” had been a_ _stress-relief_ _handjob in a hospital broom closet,_ _though it could be argued that Dan had managed to_ _fuck_ _Herbert one more time in_ _open_ _court_ _.)_

The quivering ache that shows through the skin... With his left hand he fondles, slow but sure, firm and ginger and occasionally teasing, even as his right fingers viciously stimulate the prostate and tear free little gasps. He wants the man below him _undone_.

When Herbert's finger-fucked as open as he's likely to get, Dan slides between his legs and pushes inward. He's not going to last long; Herbert's tight and hot—so hot, for such a cold man—and pale and pliant and strong. And inside, his mind burns with the kind of brilliance that Dan can't imagine not wanting to touch.

The fact that he wants Dan back is wildly bizarre.

He's spent so long seeing Herbert as a monster, something less or more than a person—and he probably is that. But this... this is a man in his bed, a man clutching and needy and utterly human, and he must always have been so. Prison changes people, but not that much.

Had anyone known their secrets to ask, Dan would have said that their youthful dalliances were born of pragmatism or convenience. He'd thought that it was a way for them to let off steam, for Herbert to offer a treat and keep him satisfied, or maybe to prevent him from seeking the women his partner thought of as distractions. At best, a way for Herbert to scratch some base physical urge which happened to be reciprocated; at worst, an act verging on prostitution to keep an assistant handy.

Staging a home invasion after a prison break just to visit, though, is _not_ convenient. It smacks of payback. Loneliness. _H_ _eart_ break. For better or for worse, the heart is the one thing Dan's always believed in. And, oh, how wrong has he been for how long?

Rolling his hips luxuriantly, he leans in for a long, wet kiss. He is surrounded by arms, legs, and body. He feels himself at risk of being devoured; the monster's fangs betray a bottomless hunger. The man's whimpers verge on pleading.

Dan's few extra inches in height make it an easy stretch to nuzzle an ear and then whisper into it the most dangerous question of his life:

“ _Did you love me?”_

Hissing inhale; face hiding in a pillow. Pulse thrums visibly in outstretched neck.

“I'm not qualified to answer that,” Herbert grits.

“Liar. You're the only one who can answer it,” Dan says, sliding one hand lower to stroke reawakened desire.

“What do you want me to say?” _Is his tone petulant or plaintive?_

“Just the truth.” He finds his rhythm once again, deliberately taxing Herbert to the limit from inside and out. “Just what we were.”

“Daniel—Danny, please—I don't—”

“Come on. I want to hear.” He pumps harder, hand slickly biohazardous with lube and pre-ejaculate, privately savoring the feel of blood-engorged flesh throbbing in his palm. It reminds him of surgery, saving lives. “Or would you rather I stop?” (He doesn't, quite—just slows down and pulls carefully, cruelly, _almost_ all the way out. But it's enough. His partner _shatters_.)

“Alright!” Herbert snarls, face twisting in an agony of withdrawal. “I love you! You're— I've loved you for—Daniel _please_ —”

Dan slams home, spilling himself violently as a knife to the gut. Below, Herbert wobbles on the razor's edge, sinking his nails into Dan's biceps and wrapping his legs tighter; he lets out a keening whine. The angle proves awkward, especially when half-dazed, but Dan manages to press an apologetic kiss to that bruised neck before bringing him to his second climax with a last few twisting tugs. It's small, just a weak shudder and spurt, but one of the most privately gorgeous Dan's ever seen.

And then, as they fall tangled together beneath the covers like it's Peru all over again, Dan realizes just how much trouble he's in.

He had asked _(_ _vivisected_ _)_ as a measure of penance. He'd wanted to know just what he'd had and ignored. What he'd killed with a betrayal borne of fear.

He'd wanted to hear that it was dead so he could don his sackcloth and ashes and commence the closure.

But the tense of Herbert's response makes it all so much worse. If this sickly, silent, sordid love he carries can't be altered by all the ways Dan's misused it over the years... there's no hope. No chance. No redemption or abasement enough. Countries away, over land or sea, eternal Herbert will always be in this same pain, and it will always be Dan's to know.

His friend is so beautiful, and ugly, and human with his insides exposed—and they never were well-hidden in the first place. He's so much less lofty than the creature Dan had made of him. He's something Dan wanted. Something he may have loved, had he but acknowledged it.

“I'm sorry I destroyed you,” he says into the crook of Herbert's neck, knowing that it's not enough.

“Don't be foolish, Darling,” Herbert retorts with the bitterness of resignation. “I've never been freer in my life than after I was convicted.” But the fingers in his hair are tender, regardless.

And iron bars aside, Dan knows what he means. Because with the conviction and its corresponding loss of stature, Herbert would no longer be beholden to those basic social rules which had forced him to masquerade as the unassuming Dr. West for everyone but Dan. A monster could, for example, afford publicly to shiv a rapist as a warning, rather than having to hide his murders.

Yes, Dan can see why having the mask ripped away would please his old friend.

He sighs and rolls them into a spooned pose, one arm under Herbert's head and the other wrapped over to achieve an awkward cross-body handclasp that gathers him close. They lie in silence as on so may other nights when one or another of their beds were invaded and put to use. It feels as natural as anything ever could be with someone whose life's work defies that very concept.

Dan is beginning to drift off by the time the door jiggles. For one heart-stopping moment he fears the worst—police, here to drag Herbert out of his grasp and back to that place where Dan sent him to die. He tenses, ready to fight, and then sees a black paw flailing through the gap at the threshold.

“Mrrreowww!” the cat cries, shaking the door again.

He sounds… normal. Ordinary. A bit whiny, but certainly not a demonic roar.

When claws start in on the carpet, Dan walks the hundred miles across the room and takes his life in his hands. The cat bounds in, humpbacked and bushy-tailed, soft-pawed patting Dan's ankles and rubbing cream and orange fur along the cuffs of Herbert's pants.

Because, like a quick-change artist, Herbert's half dressed. Time is too short, morning is coming, and he's picking up his ruined shirt and shrugging into it, a silhouette of exile.

“Why the cat, Herbert?” Dan picks up the animal and sits on the edge of the bed, trying in vain to catch his shade's eyes.

“Beg pardon?” It can't be just coincidence that keeps Herbert's attention studiously focused on the pearly buttons and bloody polyester.

“You know what I mean.”

Shoes go on with a speed and alacrity Dan remembers from a morgue visit so long ago, and then Herbert relents.

“I suppose, in a way, I wanted to leave something behind that would remind you of me.” The admission is shamed, somehow, as though it diminishes its speaker but must be said.

How to explain what he'd done when Socks reminded him too much of the one he shouldn't want and couldn't have? But then, for all his derangements, Herbert was a born pathologist, and had performed surgery on the results. He knew. He knew and failed to comprehend so much with that immeasurable alien brain.

“Are you happy, Daniel? Content?” His way with words always had been peculiar: direct and precise, but lacking any hint of nuance. Dan holds the cat a little tighter, petting his soft mismatched belly until he meows to be let down. His silence is apparently answer enough.

“Find a wife.” Dr. West's voice is not _un_ kind when offering the prescription. “You're not meant to be solitary.”

“And you?”

“Me?” Herbert's white hands still a moment, tethered together in the act of tying his black silk noose. His face answers before his voice. “I'll live.” He could be a painting of the night Dan forced a beautiful boy to go cold turkey and told himself it wasn't love that made said boy agree. Herbert's had his last fix, and for him there never will be any other.

“Don't leave me,” Dan blurts.

“You… want to come along?” Herbert's eyebrows raise above his silvered lenses. “I'd though perhaps Asia—”

“Stay. Here. With me.” The words are not wrenched from Dan; they're a struggle to get out through a strangling knot of shame. They are a choice, like everything always has been.

“Don't they watch you?” Matter-of-fact delivery turns the question rote, formulaic, a throwing-out of a well-trod reason _why not_. Herbert finishes pulling his tie tight, masking the soon-to-fade marks of Dan's teeth under crisp cotton, and takes a step further towards the portal behind which shadows wait to swallow him.

“Not for the last decade. We're old news.”

“Ten years?” The new lines in his brow furrow into inked-in perplexity. “Are you sure?”

“No, I _forgot_ when the FBI stopped opening my mail.” If Dan _forgets_ to be serious at this most serious of times, at least he's not alone: for the second time in one night, that unnerving high-pitched laugh splits the air. "What's so funny?”

“I never realized!” Herbert cackles, stalking back towards the bed, unfastened cuffs flapping. “It was the letters!”

“What?”

“It wasn't the stabbing—they put me in solitary for trying to write!” His hands fly in a frenzy of emphasis. “No letters, no calls, no contact. Three years...” He stills into an attitude of naively horrified realization. “They _amputated_ you from me. And me from you.”

Dan's heard of this practice—separating pairs of killers if there's thought to be some sort of bond or influence between them. If anything, tonight proves why it was the right decision. He's so far in again that he can't regret.

“Fools. I could still feel you at my right shoulder, talked to you in my head.” Herbert sighs, looking oddly weary. “If I stayed, what would I do? What _could_ I do?”

“Be my eccentric live-in lover.” Dan strokes one hand down the spine's well-known curvature. “Cook; you're good at chemistry. Get a fake ID and earn a mortician's license. Write a novel that you'll never finish. Hell, since June we can get married in Canada.”

“Don't be facetious, Dan. I can't stop my work just to live like your pet.” Dangling sleeves add an absurd flourish to the attempted gravity of his flounce.

“Wait!” Dan leaps out of bed, clutching a sheet around himself, to grab exposed forearm. “I'm sorry. I know. That's why—I mean, this house has a basement.” He's never used it; who knows why he insisted on that feature, to the point of buying the last house in a deserted cul-de-sac?

Especially when there were perfectly good houses with perfectly good basements that were _not_ located on deserted cul-de-sacs.

Herbert's features go abruptly blank, his focus on Dan taking on the deadly precision of a surgical laser. “You're _j_ _oking_.”

Dan gropes for an explanation, something that will convince him. Only another monster would invite the dark back _in_. It comes back, as it always has, to the Work.

“People keep changing; even my patients—” _Kayleigh,_ _7_ _, car accident; Troy, 12,_ _congenital_ _heart defect;_ _Micah, 4, choking_ “—die, and I need you to make it stop.”

“You... need... It's not finished yet, you know that? I'll have to continue my experiments.”

“It's not that it works. It's that you at least _try_ when nobody else does.” He swallows. “… When _I_ don't.” The cat _(_ _N_ _ot Socks; Socks died;_ _Dan killed Socks_ _)_ runs a figure-8 around Herbert's ankles. “It's insane, how people don't even try. But you never change. Not really.” The words come faster, tumbling down, bricks to build a cell to hold a captive safe. “None of it made sense without you. You'll have to hide again, pretend to be normal, and I know you'll hate it, but _please—_ ”

Herbert had been openly staring, breath a little shallow, but at this he abruptly draws back into himself. The connection between them breaks, leaving Dan's hand cold with the ghost of it.

“What about your women?” Herbert's inflection is all carefree bitchy mocking and his avoidance of eye contact infinitely more telling. Dan wonders how he could ever have been so blind as to miss vulnerability hidden in the viperish digs of the past. “Am I to be a _roommate_ again, or were you serious with all that drivel?”

That's when Dan knows that it's real; that he's got him. The most feral person he's ever met may allow himself to be caged once more. They're 'negotiating.' God help them both, and all their future victims, but he's never felt so alive.

There is only one realistic option in a negotiation with Herbert West.

“I'm yours.” _Surrender._ The sheet pools on the floor when he falls to his bruised knees, wooing and conquered as he's imagined being so many times for so many wrong people since Meg. “I always have been.”

Herbert closes his eyes for a moment, tense and pained in attitude. At last he takes Dan's chin in sure fingers and tilts his face up into the light, running the other hand oh-so-gently through his hair. New-hatched hope breaking free on the face of a man already mad enough to try and conquer Death is a vision of terrible radiance, and Dan feels himself begin to burn.

“Oh, Daniel...” his lover breathes, “I'm going to make you so, so happy, my own.”

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

The truth is an awful awesome thing.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

In the weeks to come, Herbert explains his work on Nano-Plasmic Energy, frenetic and focused and altogether himself with all the beauties and horrors that entails. Lying shoulder-to-shoulder beneath the covers on an ordinary Thursday morning, their patchwork cat, Mittens, purring at his feet, Dan wonders when exactly those few vital grams left his own body: the day he first met this man, or the night he finally begged him to stay?

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger info: While Dan and Herbert are both okay with it in this story, many of their behaviors towards one another as intimate partners are (unsurprisingly) disturbing, unhealthy, and potentially triggering (as you see from the tags). This is not examined deeply in the text due to the fact that the fic is written from the perspective of a character who doesn't see it as a problem. If you have any concerns and would like to know more before reading, please feel free to email me at dorothy_notgaleATgmailDOTcom.


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